Albemarle Conservation Easement Authority (ACEA) Meeting   5/14/2026

That is a beautiful way to call a meeting on the order.

Fantastic.

All right.

Welcome, everyone.

We are...

Thank you.

Call the order.

Other matters listed?

Not listed on the agenda?

Any?

All right.

I assume everybody has had a chance to look at March 12th minutes.

I want to say how much I appreciated the, you know, the presentation slides that you included with all of that for about staff of Eastmost in the county.

I thought that was really

A well put together, but it was informative to me as well.

So moved.

Second?

Second.

Discussion?

All in favor?

Aye.

Thank you.

Just checking.

We don't have anyone online.

I wasn't sure if the applicants would be here.

Seems like they're not at the moment.

This donation proposal is for three parcels in the north of the county where

It's a 90 acre property.

An easement here would eliminate approximately 12 wellings.

You can see it's an interesting property, quite long and narrow.

It's in a drinking water watershed to the east.

It's a very steep forested mountainside.

on the critical slopes there and a mountain protection area and part of an ecological core rated as high quality by DCR.

On that side it shares boundary with an existing conservation event.

It's not a lot of boundary but that is contiguous with the National Park if you follow it around.

So through a few small trip points that is technically connected by protected lands to the national park.

And in the west, you've got Doyle's River and a tributary of Doyle's River, which are both part of a stream conservation unit, meaning that good quality aquatic habitat.

There's a bit of floodplain there as well.

The proposal is for the owners to keep one subdivision of the property, and they're asking for two dwellings, each of which up to 4,500 square feet, to be built in building envelopes, which I'll show you in a second.

The footprint they proposed is 1% of the property, about 40,000 square feet.

And standard terms for agriculture, forestry, commercial uses, grading, et cetera, except there would be natural forest provisions in the purple area there on the steep wooded slopes, meaning no timbering, no clearing for agriculture.

And finally, they're proposing 100%

on the stream through the center and the streams in the west and the area between the streams as well, which is just kind of a, it's not quite a wetland, but it's a wet woodland, I would say.

The proposed building envelopes are shown here in yellow.

I've zoomed in a little bit.

The one on the left,

that they've just built last year.

The one on the right is vacant.

These two buildings are no longer there.

They were small agricultural structures.

So taken all together, this is how it looks with the protection areas, the buffers, and the building envelopes.

and it meets the acceptance criteria or the stated acceptance criteria.

It's one of the steps, it's an adjacent parcel.

Yeah, there are actually five parcels here.

The big one, which is part of the proposal.

One, two, not part of the proposal.

This one that is, and another one that isn't.

They're each about five acres, I think.

All three of them owned by different owners.

I think one of them is owned by the owner of this property here.

It appears to be a road to the far right that's cutting across the corner there.

Is that a road?

This here?

Yeah.

That's a stream, not a road.

So it doesn't have connection there.

So usually you see these funky lots like that and they extend

You know, so they have to have the minimum or whatever road frontage, and then they shoot back the length of the property or something like that.

These are very old.

I couldn't find back to the 40s at least.

These existed as they did.

Families.

I think it's, when I visited, I would guess 950 to 1000.

The 1100 is not just an arbitrary figure.

Does it reflect the topography?

It's somewhat arbitrary trying to find a contour that encapsulates

But that figure's in the ordinance, right?

No, it's not 1,100 feet.

There is a figure for the mountain protection area.

It was never enacted.

It's not an ordinance.

You knew where I was going.

Let's see, we can see where the mountain protection area is.

So where does the 1100 feet, and who selected 1100 feet?

No, this was me coming up with this.

And each time I try to find a contour that protects what we want to protect, but doesn't.

And I remember I would have ideally gone a bit lower to 1080, 1060, something like that, which would have covered more of the steep forested hillside.

But then it started wrapping around into this corner here.

which is a shoulder and that had been cleared was a historically a Pesterfield and the new owners had cleared the cedar from it.

But they're agreeing.

I mean, they're happy to do it.

They said 1100 feet, whatever.

Yeah, this yellow area here is the building envelope for the second dwelling.

Yes.

I want to make sure I'm clear to this.

So those odd-shaped parcels to the right, some of those are not included in this easement, but the ones that are not included in this easement are not owned by the same person.

Okay and then tell me again what the purple is.

That's the 1100 foot and above and forest protection area.

It's so old it's not mapped it's just kind of written out so I don't really know.

I know I found the access easement I think for this top one

It wasn't mapped.

I imagine they're just using the driveway that exists.

I see it in that part, but how does it access the...

It doesn't.

There's currently a kind of forest track.

What if they want to build an access road that crosses through the stream buffer?

They could.

And that's a good thing to be considering here.

The county has some powers to make their access

As little impact as possible, but even though this is all critical slopes, they have the right to build the first dwelling, even though it would be ridiculous.

The steepness of this slope is crazy, theoretically.

To be able to build it if it's over 25%, right?

Well, that only applies, generally that's true, but

You said they wanted to retain one subdivision, right?

So there would possibly in the future be two separate owners.

They haven't proposed anything.

They don't know.

They're not... For now, yes.

As the proposal is written, this would allow them to change the internal boundary lines however they wanted and have two owners across how many parcels.

Have we accepted any subdivisions recently?

Do you mean easements that allow subdivision?

Yes.

I thought that was excluded from our criteria.

There's that 40 acre density kind of minimum just as a consideration for what to accept or not accept, but especially with the larger properties, you know, 100 or 200 acres or more,

Quite a few of our easements, I don't have the stats, but I've taken them out, allow some degree of division.

It might be three lots across 200 acres or something like that.

There's three separate ownerships across 200 acres or 400 acres.

Yeah, that's fairly common.

It's relatively rare to have a large property easement that allows no division whatsoever.

Just seems odd if they're limited to two dwellings.

I think that often happens because they know where the nicest building site is.

Yeah, I'm less concerned with where, I mean, in my mind they could even have

Yeah, I considered suggesting that as well.

Sometimes when we permit subdivisions, we'd say minimum size 100 acres or one of the parcels has to be at least 100 acres.

Could it be as small as two acres?

That might actually be better.

Right.

Some people would say that would be better.

Yeah.

So at the moment, there's no restriction.

I don't have a problem with the existing house, which is codified by this

the distance between that house and the road, what I think is the road, is probably more than two acres, right?

This gets access from an access easement.

This access is on Blackwell's Hollow up here.

Right.

In between the two forks on the right, there are, if I'm not mistaken, there are two parcels right there.

Right.

We hit it completely landlocked.

A bunch of landlocked lots up along behind my house up on near Britt Hill.

I don't know what you do with those.

Crazy.

Essentially.

So remind me, how many division rights this would have?

12.

12 realistic dwellings.

And that's 12 within the context of an access road, right?

I'd be much happier that that did not happen.

Is there a second?

I'll second it.

Further discussion?

All in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

Chair reminded?

There we go.

Okay.

Next we have closed meetings.

Remind me we make the motion and then go in.

Someone please make a motion.

I move that the Albemarle Conservation Easement Authority convene a closed meeting pursuant to section 2.2-3711A of the Code of Virginia under subsection 8 to consult with legal counsel regarding specific legal matters.

And it would need to continue.

Related to the interpretation.

Related to the interpretation.

Related to the interpretation of conservation, easement language, and addressing permitted land uses, which requires the provision of legal advice by such counsel.

You haven't memorized that by now?

No.

Try not to.

Do we need a second?

There needs to be a second.

Is there a second?

Second.

Roll call.

Yes, one second.

And Director Fennell?

Yes.

Aye.

Taylor?

Aye.

Director Emmitt?

Aye.

Director Moore?

Aye.

Director Moses?

So if we could turn off the recording and excuse the online guests.

All right, do you have the language?

Can you pull the language up?

I move that the Albemarle Cons, are we recording this or?

No recording, start ticking.

Okay.

I move that the Albemarle Conservation Easement Authority, certified by a recorded vote, that to the best of each member's knowledge, only public business matters lawfully exempted from the open meeting requirements of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act and identified in the motion authorizing the closed meeting were heard, discussed, or considered in the closed meeting.

Is there a second?

Oh, is there a second?

Second.

Sorry, who gave that second?

Peter Taylor.

Thank you.

Director Fennell?

Aye.

Director Taylor?

Aye.

Director Buttrick?

Aye.

Director Emmitt?

Aye.

Director Merrick?

Aye.

Director Moore?

Aye.

Director Moses?

Aye.

All right, is there any new business?

Excellent.

Any old business?

Do I have a motion to adjourn?

So made.

All in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

Thanks.

Staff, Council, thank you very much.

Well done.

Thank you all.